Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Visuospatial ability is your ability to recognize and remember objects and the
relations between those objects. This skill can be essential for everyday tasks
such as driving, finding your way in a city, or making sense of a map or objects
around you.
This is one of the key positive effects of video games that might be beneficial for
students and professionals, but will also serve gamers well in everyday life.
Researchers performed fMRI scans on 27 professional gamers and found they had more
grey matter and “heightened connectivity between certain subregions in the insular
cortex”. In practice, this translates to enhanced cognitive abilities, which
include improved problem-solving skills and logic.
Many gamers play games that require a great deal of planning, strategic thinking
and using logic to achieve goals within the game, so it makes sense that they will
have enhanced development in areas of the brain dedicated to problem solving and
logic.
A study from the University of Toronto in 2014 found that people who play games
regularly have better sensorimotor skills than those who don’t play video games.
These skills are key for faster learning and adoption of tasks that require hand-
to-eye coordination, such as bike riding, typing, or other tasks that require you
to coordinate the movement of your hands with the movement of your eyes.
The study included 18 gamers and 18 non-gamers; both groups had to perform a simple
task on their screens that involved following green dots with the mouse. At first,
there seemed to be no major differences between the two groups.
However, as the test carried on and it got repetitive, the tests showed that gamers
performed with more speed and more accuracy than non-gamers.
Games allow you to develop an ability to learn sensorimotor patterns and movements
faster and more efficiently, which may help you with tasks in the physical world.
This is one of the most notable benefits of gaming because it provides you with the
ability to perform your daily tasks better and more efficiently, and also complete
many tasks at the same time.
Many games force players to perform several tasks at the same time – especially
action games. For example, you have to look at the enemy on the screen, keep track
of your health, ammo, and other stats, as well as move your character. You might
also be speaking on a microphone with your teammates and friends.
With all of the fast paced action and hyper-stimulation that modern games provide,
gamer’s may improve their multi-tasking ability.